


Hot & Cold

by aimmyarrowshigh, spibsy (lucy_and_ramona)



Category: Union J (Band)
Genre: Body Confidence, Body Issues TW, Body Worship, Established Relationship, M/M, Swimming Pools, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucy_and_ramona/pseuds/spibsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the <a href="http://unionj.org/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=268">Barbados photos</a> and especially this <a href="http://aimmyarrowshigh.tumblr.com/post/54621890308">Vine</a>.  Established relationship Gosh play in the pool on their vacation.  That's it, really!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot & Cold

It's so _hot_.

It's several other things where they are, amazing and beautiful and picturesque, but mostly George just notices that it's hot, it's hot and dry and arid and George doesn't like that.

What he _does_ like is the pool they've got. They've all sort of gathered around i t, either sitting in the shade or in the pool itself. Josh is sort of wading near George, while George is just dangling his legs in, letting the cool wetness drift around his legs as he swishes them back and forth through the clear water.

If they hadn't hired a photographer to follow Josh and George around for the day, he'd have a drink in his hand. (It's ridiculous; he's of age and Josh is even older, 364 days older, and the fans all know that George drinks. They saw Jesy's birthday, and that time he forgot how to legs in the van off X Factor.)

But alas, the photographer _is_ there, snapping idly every so often, and so George remains drinkless. His main hope right now is that the photographer's not getting him at a bad angle like that other one did one time, that angle where it looks like he's got a double chin, even though George triple-checked once he saw the pictures to make sure he didn't.

Probably all of the photos are of Josh, anyway, wandering around in circles in the shallow end with his shirt off. It _does_ make a pretty picture.

Even without a drink, George feels pretty daring, with the heat making his mind muddle pleasantly. He kicks out just enough to splash Josh with the wave from his foot, and beckons with one finger. Mostly he does it just to see if Josh'll listen to him.

Josh startles like there's been a tsunami. His sunglasses tumble into the pool and he frowns at George. "How'm I supposed to see now?"

"With your eyes?" George guesses. "Or you can duck down and get them."

"My hair will go flat."

"You'll still look fantastic." George doesn't say it like he means anything at all, which is his favorite way to say things to Josh because then Josh goes all squinty and suspicious like he thinks George's just insulted him. "Or you could come here and keep me company."

Josh's eyes do, in fact, narrow, although that might be the sun now that he's apparently being blinded. "You come down here and keep _me_ company. And you can retrieve my sunglasses, as it's your fault they've drowned."

George sighs heavily, leaning his elbows on his thighs, which are slathered in sun cream so he doesn't burn them. "I haven't got another t-shirt, and I don't want to walk around with this one all soaking wet," he says plainly. "And I don't think sunglasses can drown, unless you've got ones with lungs."

Josh's eyes unsquint and go soft, reflecting up the blue of the water and the sky and every other ridiculous metaphor George knows, as happens to him sometimes when Josh looks at him like this, all... indulgent and challenging at once.

"What?" he asks, trying to whine, but it comes out all fond and affectionate, exactly like he knew it would. "Why're you lookin' at me?"

"I'll let my hair go flat if you take that shirt off and come swim with me," Josh suggests. He flicks a bit of water up onto George's knee.

George thoughtfully watches it drip down his leg back into the pool. It's an idea. He doesn't swim with his shirt off (barely does anything with his shirt off, if he's honest) but Josh never lets his hair go flat. Still, he can't help the cold snake of dread that shivers itself up his spine.

"I'll lotion you," Josh offers. "It's a good excuse to get my hands on you without looking suspicious, isn't it? And if you burn anyway, I can aloe you later."

"Well, if you're gonna lotion me." George bats his eyelashes at Josh with a tiny smile that wavers and then dies. "S'just you 'n me, right?" he asks, swishing his leg over to prod his toe against Josh's hip.

Josh looks over at the camera on its tripod. "Definitely for the aloe, yeah."

George snorts out a stupid little not-laugh, then uses his toes to draw Josh in closer. "Yeah, okay," he mutters, his fingers fidgeting with the bottom of his t-shirt. This is -- he's not gone swimming without a shirt on in what seems like _ever_ , not since he was very young, at least, and this seems like a big thing even though he knows it shouldn't be.

"You don't have to, kid." Josh wades close enough that he can catch one of George's ankles in one hand beneath the water, his fingers wrapping nearly around George's small joints. It's one of the things George likes best about Josh.

He huffs and smiles and does a shrug, because he feels a little like he does have to. For himself, if nothing else. "I know," he murmurs, tipping his foot to press his toes against Josh's wrist. "Thanks." He clears his throat, shooing Josh with a hand. "Fetch the lotion, servant."

Josh rolls his eyes. "Don't think I've forgotten my sunnies."

"Poor drowned sunnies," George mockingly agrees, holding a hand to his chest. "I do hope they're still alive by the time I make it down there."

Josh rolls his eyes again and hoists himself out of the pool, pretty arms flexing to show every muscle. George quite likes to bite them when they're alone. "I do hope I haven't stepped on them by the time you make it down there."

"I'll get you new ones," George mutters. He gets in a pinch of Josh's leg, low on his thigh right above the soft skin behind his knee, and he laughs when Josh makes a disgruntled noise and shakes him off.

"See if I properly protect you from UV rays," he mutters. "I'll write 'I suck' in lotion on your back so you burn everywhere but the letters."

"You wouldn't dare do that to me, you like me too much." George tips his chin up to give Josh a wide-eyed blinking look. "In several ways."

"Well. It'd have two meanings." Josh pads across to the chair he'd claimed as his own, just beneath a palm tree with willowy fronds so that he'd stolen all of the best shade on the pool deck.

George hiccups out a laugh. "Well, there is that. S'pose at least of them would be true, and all. Let nobody say you're not honest."

Josh winks and clucks, giving George the tiniest glimpse of his off-center teeth. George does like those teeth, both when they're nipping at his hipbones and when they're a reminder that--well, as much as he looks it, Josh isn't perfect, either, and no one can _really_ reasonably expect George to be.

He sweeps his legs up out of the pool to toddle over to Josh. He'd like to set his chin on Josh's shoulder but he doesn't dare with the photographer lurking, so instead he bumps their shoulders together. "I've always wanted to try underwater kissing," he hums."

"Okay, Percy Jackson," Josh snorts. He sits on the chaise longue and looks up at George expectantly before quietly adding, "Honestly, if you'll swim with me, I think you deserve anything you want."

And George isn't sure how he's supposed to resist going in for a hug, so he does, plopping down beside Josh and giving him a bit of a cuddle. They're a cuddly bunch of folk, so it can't be too terribly odd.

"You smell like ocean," Josh murmurs.

"You smell like gorgeous." Cheesy but true. George nuzzles his nose against Josh's shoulder, quickly, just for a moment.

"I can buy new sunnies," Josh says. "If you'd rather just, you know, not."

"No, I'm invested now. And who'm I to say no to the one and only Josh Cuthbert putting lotion on my back?" George shuffles around until his back's to Josh and then breathes in, tugs his shirt off from the back of his neck, breathes out. 

He can tell his belly is pooching out over the top of his bathing suit bottoms. And his armpits wrinkle _weirdly_.

He gets a kiss to the back of his neck and Josh making one of his weird purring cat noises that George finds terribly endearing. Most of Josh is probably hidden by George's massive hair, so whatver. "This'll be cold," he warns under his breath before one hand smooths cold cream over one of George's shoulders.

Great, now his nips are probably nipping up. People are going to compare him to Harry Styles again. But George at least only has normal human amounts of body parts.

And there are worse people to be compared to, aesthetically, probably. People could compare him to Louis Walsh.

George gives a little despairing whimper at that.

"What's wrong, kiddo?"

"I look like Louis Walsh with my shirt off."

Josh seems to choke on something, perhaps his own disgust at the sight of George. "You do _not_ look like Louis Walsh with your shirt off, but thanks a lot for the nightmares."

George makes another despairing noise, and Josh meows right back.

Maybe Jaymi was right that they are not normal at all, but properly made for each other.

"Am I properly blocked from sun?" George asks, dipping his head down so that Josh can rub in little circles on the back of his neck. "Is my pasty skin blinding you at all?"

"You aren't pasty," Josh assures him quietly. "And you couldn't blind me if you tried. Unless you tried, right, and like stuck something in my eyes. But please don't. I've lost the protection of my sunnies."

George does manage a laugh at that, short and so quiet he doesn't think it counts, but a laugh all the same. "I won't stick something in your eyes." He pauses. "Well, apart from that one time, but that was an accident, and you did say I could."

"Ugh," Josh grunts. "Never again. Don't know why you like that at all."

"It's a very common thing to be into, I'll have you know." George tilts his head back to look Josh in the face. "I looked it up on the internet."

"Of course you did," Josh sighs. He tickles under George's ribs as he smooths in more lotion. "I bet you went off and designed a font of little cocks spurting swashes everywhere."

"You remembered the word 'swashes,'" George mimps, as his pupils shape themselves into hearts because Josh is wonderful, except when he's not.

He can feel Josh puff up a bit behind him, because Josh has leaned so close now that his chest is pressed very nearly to George's back. "Yeah, well. It's not that big a deal."

George looks down, just able to see how big Josh's hand looks spanned across his ribs. Josh can always hold him in place so easily. "It's a medium-sized deal to me."

Josh's mouth touches the side of George's neck. "That's acceptable. As long as you're happy."

George nods. Josh's hand squeezes lightly at George's ribs, and then there's a pat on his arm and a, "Done. Ready to get back in the water?"

George takes a breath. And then another. And then a third. Actually, maybe he's just breathing. "I dunno. Am I?"

"I think you look good. I could eat you up. Or out. I might later." Josh pushes himself up to standing and holds out a hand, letting George decide whether that's enough incentive to follow Josh into the water, skin on display not only for Josh, not only for _strangers_ , but for cameras, too. For _everyone_.

But the thing is, the _thing_ is, it's not really for everyone. Everyone might see him, but there's only really one person whose opinion matters to him, and that's Josh. And Josh clearly has no problem with George's poochy stomach and weird armpit wrinkles.

(Really, though, Josh only has nine and a half fingers. He may not care because he doesn't have much room to talk about bodily oddities. 

He's gorgeous, though, George thinks, looking up at him. All drenched in sunlight and droplets of water still beading on his shoulders and slicking his hair to a shine.)

His quiff's not quiffing right now, flopped over to one side, and he's patiently holding out his hand, doesn't even look annoyed that George is hesitating so long. George really, really, really loves him.

It's kind of funny to remember how nervous Josh had made him back at boot camp, thinking back.

"Come on, kiddo," Josh urges, wriggling his fingers at George. "You're alright, you know?"

George flushes pink on the tips of his ears, and not from the sun; he takes Josh's hand and lets Josh put those ridiculous python biceps to good use hauling him to his feet.

Josh's arm is still a bit damp from the pool when he slips it around George's waist in a quick side-hug, urging him along with him as they plod on toward the pool. George can feel the slight breeze on the skin of his chest.

It feels, for those long four steps back to the stairs into the water, like _everything in the world_ is focused on him. And he knows, he's been told and has been practicing thinking, that it's simply not true. But it seems like the wind is determined to fluff his hair about until he looks like a porcupine, and the sun is casting light just to make unattractive shadows emphasize the shape of George's arms, and every person in the water has stopped swimming or bobbing just long enough to give him a stare.

Josh is still there, though, a solid warmth at George's side, his arm curled around George's, his hand settled neatly at George's wrist like he wants nothing more than to slide it down and intertwine their fingers like he does sometimes when they're in bed and he thinks George is asleep.

He doesn't, of course. Cameras. Tourists. But he does tilt his head and murmur, "Alright?"

It takes George a moment to respond, all dry lips and a frog in his throat. "Alright," he manages after he swallows, bobbing his head in a facsimile of a nod. "Water?"

"Yeah," Josh says. "Do you want to walk around to the deep end and dive or just get in here with our water wings?"

"I seem to have forgotten my water wings, unfortunately." George dubiously eyes the water. "Nothing else for it. Deep end it is."

He can see the benefit in diving -- gets into the water faster, and he can just bob up and stay mostly under. Josh is smart, when he wants to be.

They pad over to the deep end, feet slapping on pool's edge, and George notices that Josh is casually closest to the pool, which means he's in between the photographer and George. Well, that's awfully nice of him.

It's always been that way, though, a bit -- Josh took the solos that made George feel as though he might vomit, too, and stayed between Blair and George when that whole meltdown over management scorched all of the boys and their families. At first, George had taken it as Josh being stubborn and needing to be the center of attention, but after their near-elimination at Halloween, when he'd cried on Josh without his complaining at all, George figured it out.

Not that he's mentioned it to Josh aloud. Josh gets weird about that sort of thing, after all, and George would rather Josh not get weird about things when he could be kissing George or hugging George or loving George.

(He does all of those rather well. There had been a jaw angle situation for a while, but they sorted it.)

"In you go," urges Josh, knuckling the base of George's spine. "Bet you I can get a bigger splash than you."

George feels a flutter of grateful warmth, so he grants Josh a grin. "Twenty pounds you can't."

"You're throwing your money away, Shelley, but far be it from me to stop you." Josh raises his eyebrows and folds his arms across his chest. A rather nice chest. George pauses to admire it for a second.

He bites his lip. "I don't want any judges," he says quietly. "I'll just dive first and then trust you to be honest about the splashing. I want -- you can watch me dive, okay?"

"Course it's okay." Josh has the look on his face that he gets when he wants to kiss George but can't for whatever reason. It's a look George wishes he got a bit less than he does.

Maybe he'll attempt to kiss Josh underwater, like the demigod kid does with his girlfriend at the end of that series Leo and Louisa like so much. Although that seems like a recipe for water up one's nose, if you don't happen to be the son of Poseidon.

George doesn't really want to drown. He's heard somewhere that drowning is the least nice way to die.

Or maybe that was polar bears. Either way, you end up cold and probably wet.

"Alright." He takes a deep breath. No more stalling. He's gonna do this, all shirtless and everything.

It's nice, diving into a deep blue pool in the Bahamas on a hot day. 

Also, ice cream is delicious, in Scotland it's raining, and the worst font is Papyrus.

Regardless of its cliche obvious, it's still a sort of epiphany when George opens his eyes under the blue and they sting at the chlorine. He touches his hand, palm flat, against the bottom tiles of the pool and then pushes off with his legs so he rockets skyward, the water getting brighter and brighter with the reflections of the tropical sunshine off the ripples from George's splash. When his head breaks the surface, he blinks, shakes water out of his fringe, and finds Josh.

Josh, who is smiling at him wide and pleased. "Yeah, alright, Ariel," he says, scooting a step back. "I can beat that easy."

He bends his knees, then straightens, then bends again to unfold in a long, smooth dive, his tan standing out stark against the clear blue of the water in the pool. It's really quite beautiful.

The problem with an actually good dive, of course, is that they don't really splash at all. So when Josh surfaces, after pulling at George's foot underwater to make him shriek, George just gloats.

"Yeah, yeah," Josh gripes. "Whatever. I think you cheated."

"I cheated by not knowing how to dive," George points out. "So depending on how you think about it, you really still won."

Josh takes a moment to think that over before he hums, pleased, and ducks George's head under the water.

George quick-as-a-wink twists Josh's nipple and Josh lets him up, both of them spluttering.

"Cheater." The back of Josh's hand brushes George's stomach. "Wasn't so hard, was it?" he asks, tilting his head.

George shrugs as best he can whilst treading water and trying to keep as much of him as he can below the surface.

"You're doing alright?" Josh checks, splashing George as he does. "If you need to get out, that's alright."

"I'd rather stay in," George admits, "Now that I'm here. It's really hot out."

"It is," agrees Josh. "And we both burn easy, don't we?" He prods George's ribs. "Not with sunscreen, though."

George rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, thank you very much for being a chivalrous knight and saving my thin porcelain skin so my glass bones don't break and poke through it in the night, or whatever that is."

"You're very welcome, my good lad." Josh draws himself up as well as he can when he's bobbing in the water. "I live to serve."

He splashes George mightily in the face -- _"since you like it so much"_ \-- and takes off with a powerful stroke towards the shallow end. "Race you?"

"Not fair!" George hollers, trying frantically to catch up, but, well, Josh has got the arms of a Greek God, and George... hasn't. Got those.

He is taller than Josh, but that doesn't help much unless they're standing.

Or horizontal.

Then it helps, too.

Technically they're horizontal now, but it's not as fun as it usually is, with Josh's legs kicking chloriney water in his face and George having to sputter through it.

(Well. Slightly usual. But not the kicking part.)

Josh wins, anyway, and swaggers around with his victory, a _tainted_ victory, which George makes sure he knows.

Once George has finally let Josh come up for air, Josh pokes George repeatedly in the chest and says, "Hey, you, I thought the whole reason you came in with me was to retrieve my sunglasses."

"Oh, that is why, isn't it?" George murmurs, glancing down to the bottom of the pool where, indeed, Josh's sunglasses are lying, undisturbed.

Josh smacks George's bum under the water. It doesn't have the usual force behind it, slogging through water as it is, but George giggles and gives a little shimmy anyway.

"I'm off, boss," he says with a salute, pushing off the side of the pool to dive down far enough to touch the bottom. If he uses his feet as sort of rudders, he can crawl along the floor of the pool, and then it's simple as grabbing the sunglasses and pushing up to the surface again.

Bit weird, without the shirt he usually wears making him drag.

Maybe there really is something to all of that business about Olympic swimmers shaving themselves bare.

"Would you still like me if I were hairless?" he asks Josh, spitting chlorine out of his mouth, when he resurfaces.

"I swear, you think of the oddest fucking things," Josh says, shaking his head. "I don't know, probably. Would it be like a medical condition where all your hairs fell out? Or would it be you deciding to shave all your hair off?"

"Maybe shaving it off. Except my eyebrows, because I look like Spock without them. And my regular hair, since I don't want to owe RCA a lot of money. But the rest of it, I don't know. Might not be necessary. Like jar of bees."  
"Less stingy than a jar of bees." Josh casts a critical eye over him. "I dunno. You're not, like, overly hairy. You're not Jaymi."

George cringes. "Thank fuck for that, honestly. I have too much on my head to deal with that much everywhere else."

"You'd literally be a monkey," Josh agrees.

"I am literally a monkey." George puffs out his cheeks and reaches under his sopping mess of hair to pull on his ears.

Josh rolls his eyes and plucks the sunglasses from George's face.

"Hey!" George exclaims with a frown. "I was using those. They make me look dashing."

"They're supposed to make _me_ look dashing," Josh says. "You're supposed to look cute."

"Well, they make me look that, too." George wrinkles his nose. "I think I deserve them. Went all the way to the bottom of the pool to get them."

"Yeah, well," says Josh, "You did say you liked being on the bottom every once in a while."

George's mouth falls open, and he smacks Josh's arm. "Rude," he accuses. "Rude and uncalled for!"

He thinks Josh might roll his eyes. It's hard to tell behind the sunglasses.

"We should do something," George decides. "No point in just standing around in a pool. Let's do something. Let's do a thing."

"I could race you again," Josh says, "But I'd just win."

"Would not," grumbles George, but he doesn't suggest they do that, because, well, because Josh _would_ win.

"Well, everything else that I want to do when you look like that is something we shouldn't in front of a camera," Josh says.

That brings on a whole different set of thoughts for George, who thoughtfully taps his lips with a finger. "Oh, I dunno. Maybe not _this_ camera."

Josh's mouth twists in that way that it does when he's trying to hide a grin because he doesn't want anyone to see his teeth.

It just makes George smile wide and stupid, his teeth digging into his lower lip when he bites it to try and stop. He giggles, of course, because there's nothing at all to giggle at, and splashes Josh again.

Josh splashes George enough times that they've enough lather worked up for him to pull George behind a particularly brilliant splash and kiss him, so quickly that it's barely registered in George's head before it's over.

And it's not nearly enough, not when Josh is so so lovely, and so good to Georges who are self-conscious. Josh deserves all the kisses in the world.

"Hey," George murmurs. "I know you wanted to swim with me, but like... do you maybe want to do some other things with me instead?"

Josh's mouth curls up at the corner. "I always want to do other things with you, kiddo." He sidles a little closer in the water.

Josh's mouth comes close to George's ear. "But we've booked the photographer for fifteen more minutes. Can you wait that long?"

George whines. Or, well, he doesn't whine, he just. Maybe hums. Quietly.

"Fine," he decides. "If we have to be Boyband George And Josh for another fifteen minutes, let's really boyband it up."

"Dance routine?"

"Dance routine," George agrees.

They're neither of them very synchronized, but they can do well enough for a few photos. Maybe a Twitter video. The more George thinks about it, the more he likes the idea.

They take ten minutes to choreograph, because they're very uncoordinated and anyway, twitter videos are all of five seconds long.

"Alright, alright, we're ready?" George checks, swooping his fingers through the water. He's all keyed up and ready to go back to the hotel room.

Josh dunks George under the water one more time, and then, when he comes up looking cross, pulls him in with an arm looped around his neck to ask, "You're alright putting out a video without your shirt? You can paddle over and get it, if you like."

"No, I'm okay," says George, after he considers the idea. "Really, I am. I mean, we're mostly in the water, right?"

Josh nods. "Yeah, you can stay as covered as you like."

"I know. Thanks." He nudges Josh with his hip. "Are we ready?"

Josh nods, and the photographer, whose name George still doesn't know, rolls his eyes as he switches from his big, fancy Nikon to George's iPhone.

Which is still, like, nice, maybe not as nice as a big fancy camera, but it's a Twitter video, it's not like it's got to be in HD.

(George would sort of prefer a bit of blur, if he's honest.)

And it goes fine, the world doesn't explode, nobody laughs at George's Louis Walsh body, and he gets all his synchronized moves right. In the right order.

It's the longest five seconds of his life.

But once it's done, the camera on the phone off and the grumbly photographer snatching his expensive camera up again, Josh presses all along George's fine and his mouth presses to George's ear when he says, "Proud of you, love."

George goes pink and shrugs one shoulder. "Shouldn't be something to be proud of, really."

"Well I am, so let me be." Josh flicks him. "Ready to get out of here?"

"Does your offer from before still hold?"

"My offer from before does, in fact, still hold." Josh tips his chin up. "Are you accepting it?"

George shivers down to the base of his spine. "Do I ever not?" He pauses. "Wait, does your offer only hold on the condition I hold up mine?"

"What was that?"

George winks at Josh as he clambers out of the water and dives back into his t-shirt and a fluffy flannel. "To shave everything below my eyebrows."

"My offer happened to be unconditional," Josh says, lifting himself out of the water with only his arms because he's a massive show-off-y prick, "as it happens. But if you want to shave off your everything, I can hardly stop you."

George hums as he scrubs out his hair with the terrycloth. "I'm all for experimentation. But I'm also impatient. Help me out?"

"Could do," Josh says agreeably. "I'm always one for giving a mate a hand."

George licks his lip as he looks at Josh's hands, big and tanned and at this moment, adjusting the waist of his red trunks. "That are you are."

"I figure you'd know better than most." Josh snorts softly. "Are you ready? Dry enough to head back?"

George peers out of the towel bundle on his head and blinks winsomely at Josh. "To bed with you? Always."

Josh gives George's hair a ruffle, his hand curling around the back of George's neck for an affectionate squeeze. "I just bet you are," he mumbles.

They keep their distance, just enough that it pulls with a buzz, as they traipse out of the pool area and into the lift up to their suite.

It's tempting to try to start something in the lift, but there's too much of a chance that someone on one of these floors will want to get on the elevator, so George keeps his hands to himself. Mostly.

He busies himself with trying to get into his t-shirt correctly, but the tag keeps getting in his mouth.

"You've got it on backwards, you ninny," laughs Josh. He helps George twist his shirt around until it settles on his shoulders the way it's supposed to. "There you go. You'd be lost without me."

George just beams at him and nods happily. It's true.

Finally, finally, they arive outside their room, and George has to keep himself from pushing Josh up against it. Instead, he bounces around as Josh fiddles with the key for far too long.

Finally, the key-card runs the right way and they tumble through the door, a mass of boy and flannel and chlorine smell and sand caught in odd places from their boat ride in the morning.

"Been waiting for ages," mutters Josh, kicking the door shut and then yanking George's shirt off of him.

"I just got that on," George pouts, but then shakes his head because Josh is sucking at his neck and no, no, not the point.

Josh's hands are warm and lovely against the skin of George's back, where he's started getting chilled from the air conditioning on full blast. It's nice but startling after the heat from outside.

"You were amazing today," Josh mutters into George's skin. "And you're so gorgeous and I'm so proud of you."

George heats up a little at that, blood rushing to his face, and he hooks an arm around Josh's neck to keep him held close. "Wasn't anything," he sighs. "You're too good to me."

"Well, I have to keep you somehow," Josh says. He trails a kiss down over the curve of George's shoulder, and it shouldn't feel like anything, but his lips are hot and the tip of his nose is cold and his breath tickles and the stubble on his lip scratches and it's so good.

George hums, and slides his own hands up Josh's back, over the muscles there that George doesn't think he could get in a million years, even if he worked out every day.

Josh winces.

"Hmm?" asks George, his fingertips pausing on one of Josh's shoulder blades.

"I don't know," Josh says, and his eyebrows look dramatically puzzled.

Very expressive eyebrows, has Josh.

George pulls him closer, stepping back a little so that he can drop down onto the bed, digging his fingers in to make sure Josh drops with him.

"Ow!" Josh twists away. "Sorry, just -- _ow_."

"What's wrong?" George fusses, patting Josh's shoulders. "Oh, ouch." He winces, taking in the bright pink color of Josh's back. "Didn't you get yourself before you got me?"

"I never burn," Josh snips. "It's one of my charms."

"I beg to differ." George presses a finger to Josh's shoulder blade, watching it go white before fading back into the red. "You're red as a lobster."

"Stop poking me." Josh wriggles away. "It hurts. Fix me."

"How am I supposed to fix you?" George asks. He was hoping for something quite a bit different from this to happen when they returned to the room. "Did you pack an aloe plant?"

"Why would I pack a plant?"

Josh looks so miserable that it makes George sympathy-giggle. He bends his face forward and kisses the glowing-hot burnt patch of Josh's shoulder as gently as he can.

"I might've packed some lotion that could help," he muses, frowning as he tries to remember everything he packed before they came here. "I'll look, hold on."

Josh flops down face-first onto the mattress. A pillow rolls away from his misery.

It takes George a moment, but it turns out that he did pack his aloe lotion, on the off chance that he was out too long and the sunblock wore off. "Got it!" he exclaims, tumbling back onto the bed with Josh. "This'll help."

"But I was supposed to lotion you," Josh mumbles, his eyes closed. His hair is drying all off-kilter, and George meows fondly before kissing the top of Josh's head.

"The tables have turned," he decides, squirting some of the cool gel onto Josh's back. "Besides, you already lotioned me once. Least I can do is lotion you back."

Josh sighs when George's weight settles over his bum. "I pictured exactly this going quite differently."

"You can't always get what you want," George advises very wisely, wriggling a little bit as he smooths the lotion around, being careful not to press down too hard.

"Maybe you were right all along," Josh minces as George works aloe over a particularly lobster-looking bit near the base of Josh's spine.

"About what?"

"Everyone should always wear shirts," Josh mutters.

**Author's Note:**

> GO WRITE FOR THE [GOSH BIRTHDAY FICATHON](http://unionj-fanworks.livejournal.com/10697.html)!


End file.
